


(don't) SHED YOUR MORTAL COIL

by squidcandy



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Injury, Introspection, a little love letter from me to daishou in light of haikyuu ending, daishou centric fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:02:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25554010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidcandy/pseuds/squidcandy
Summary: a love letter to suguru daishou, and his love letter to volleyball.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	(don't) SHED YOUR MORTAL COIL

Suguru Daishou is in love. He's been in love for as long as he can remember. Nine, ten, twelve years.

He's sure he's loved back. It's a fairy-tale romance, after all. Isn't true love supposed to taste like this? Like salon-pas and sweat— All-consuming, single-minded. Palm to leather, leather to floor, a rough kiss, teeth bared. They're soulmates. He'd never be let down. After all, true love is old recordings and staying up late together. It's compromise and understanding. 

Suguru understands. He sees all of it, the perfection, the systems laid carefully, and perhaps, most importantly, the flaws. He's good at understanding, at observing. He watches and waits. He talks to people as they'd like, flexible with his presentation. _Who_ he was never mattered much. It never would, is what he thinks. He doesn't need to know himself to know that he loves and that this love is enough.

Who is he in love with?

You'd be better of asking 'What.'

Suguru Daishou is in love with volleyball. He is smitten, enthralled, enraptured. For how long? Time is irrelevant in love. He's a first-year in high school and already married. He'd take people up on dates, orchestrating how to make them fall to pieces before anything had been built. He's good at that. Spotting chinks in the armour. Mental, systematic, physical. Even if you were weak, you just had to make the other person feel weaker. 

Girl, second-year, basketball obsessed, high-standards. You flake out twice and damage some equipment and you're free.

Boy, first-year, conscious about height. Say something thoughtfully thoughtless more than a few times, and you're free.

Regular relationships aren't enough. They never give back like he wants them to. He doesn't need to try anything to know that nothing will ever give back like volleyball does. Love is two sets of twenty-five.

He doesn't need anyone, he has volleyball. Weekend matches, after school sports notes, trading cards, posters, strategy, extra practice, he's living for the sport. Even just watching from the stands is exhilarating, analyzing strategies, finding the holes. 

In his second year, Suguru Daishou realizes that sometimes you are not loved back. Sometimes you ache and yearn and chase and run but never catch up. Sometimes other people run faster, fly higher, grow taller. Volleyball is not a kind lover. He knows this by the dull ache in his shoulder blades, and the world-ending rippling pain that slices through one day as he practices. He staggers to the nurse’s office, and then to the hospital.

Three months, they say. Three months is a long time to be separated from your lover. Three months is a suffocating breath fresh of air. He starts to have a shadow of a thought that maybe his love would never be requited and that he'd be better off giving it up. He breathes for the first time in seven years and thinks.

Volleyball until high-school ends. High-school sweethearts are just fantasy. They aren't real. They aren't real, he repeats over and over, gritting his teeth and watching from the benches. He hates being on the side, unable to do anything. At the same time, it's strangely enlightening. Suguru is not usually a vengeful person, is what he likes to think. He is patient, he waits for things to bubble over, he does things at his own pace, in his own time. When he is vengeful, however, he breaks things inside out. He'd break volleyball inside out, just like volleyball had broken him.

So he does what he knows best. He finds small holes in the rules and then exploits them until the physical court barely matters in comparison to the mental battlefield he’s rigged in their favour. He’d do anything to win, to feel the rush of victory and compensation for all the love he had wasted. 

When he returns to the team, it's terrifying. His right shoulder shudders with the impact of the ball, and he's scared, scared of his body giving up on him. He can't bump or spike balls like he used to. Volleyball is a team sport though, and his mistakes can be made up for.

He starts dating Mika. It's different, and serious and not stacked like a house of cards in a gale. She glows, she's clever and loves him for all of his layers and dramatics. He likes the way she laughs and calls him silly. He says things without thinking often.

But volleyball, volleyball is a siren’s call, and he dives forward to meet it no matter how much he tries to resent it. Even when he's resenting the sport, he gets good at it, and progress is a special kind of drug. As much as he tries to tell himself he loves Mika, he loves volleyball multitudes more. Mika realizes at some point and leaves him. It's not a dramatic, prop-throwing event. It's a sad, yet knowing smile and well wishes.

Strangely enough, it's easy to bury his feelings about being left. Daishou has things he cares about more. Like volleyball and nothing else. He looks at the school banner, green and yellow, dutifully watching over practice and laughs at it. The yellow kanji is intense and tries to brand itself into the back of Suguru's head when he's handed his new number and proclaimed captain. He doesn't let it.

They're called cheaters. He hears what the other teams say. He hears the rumours too. Nohebi loses out on practice matches. Suguru couldn't care less about what people thought of them unless they mattered. The crowd mattered. The referee mattered. His team and their coach mattered. Everyone else could go wallow in their own defeat because they were only cheating if they broke the rules, not if they bent them. Fair and Square.

He meets Tetsurou Kuroo often, from across the net. They lock eyes, and the air is filled with something electric. They were never enemies, for they loved the same thing, but they weren't friends either, because they loved the same thing. Kuroo had always been much more giving than him, though. 

The months fly by in victories and losses and hours spent in a sweaty green and yellow jersey. The first match of the Spring Interhigh Qualifiers, Daishou looks at the suspended, spiking figure of Itachiyama ace Kiyoomi Sakusa and sees someone loved tenderly by the sport, in the way he has always yearned for. Suguru looks at the scoreboard reading 0-2, 18-25, and sees utter defeat and stairs that are too steep to claw his way up with a busted, fear-filled shoulder. He's too hesitant to block the nasty, spinning spike that the ace drills into Kazuma's hand.

The second match of the Spring Inter-high, he meets Tetsurou Kuroo from across the net for the very last time. Nohebi is a beat-up powerhouse with a rotted reputation (his fault), a damaged arm (his fault) and a dislocated thumb (his fault). He plays like it's any other game and not his last. Same tactics, same tricks. All it takes is a lion to connect with the rest of his pride, and the snakes can do nothing but be swatted away. Suguru hesitates for just a second too much and the ball hits the sweat-slick floor.

After the game, he feels his throat tighten with something long gone. This isn't how he wants his last match to end. This isn't how he wanted things to end. It's over, he knows and yet...nothing. Finals and then college. It aches to let go. Mika knows about his decision to leave volleyball and asks to get back together. He lets a weak smile come onto his face.

His team scolds him again, for being the only one to have gotten a girlfriend, and through their hair tousling and yelling, they cry, because it's over. This will always be his team, the team that he captained, the team he played with for the last time. That's what he tells himself, but no matter how resolute he tries to be, his palms sting preemptively for a toss to spike.

He goes to watch nationals, where it feels like everybody is loved by volleyball. He can't help himself, the nationals fever is unavoidable in Tokyo, and he tries to make himself care more about what Mika wants, but every nail-biting save he witnesses has him on the edge of his seat, head resting in the palm of his hand, body tensed. He's having fun, just watching, seeing the monsters dance and beat their drums. He's having so much fun. Volleyball is fun!

He watches Itachiyama, the team that volleyball loved, get knocked out in their third match. He watches Inarizaki, another favoured team get slowly usurped by a band of ragtag, hungry crows. He sees their hunger and is reminded of a lion licking its chops. Why hadn't he been that hungry, back in qualifiers? Why didn't he play like it was his last match, shoulder be damned? _Why hadn't he played volleyball?_

After he watches the match of a lifetime, Daishou is snapped out of his half-trance and realizes that Mika is still here, and probably bored. He's relieved when she says she's okay with staying to watch some more after food.

When he spots Kuroo walking past, he can't help the sound that escapes him. Of course, he wants to be a little rude, but he lets the tension hang for about half a second before letting himself jeer at the three Nekoma third-years. The three (two? Kai is indecipherable) of them look like they're a second away from jumping him.

"Oh, c'mon, what're you getting so worked up for?" 

Daishou puts on his best smug grin and tries to act like he's not talking to himself.

"Losing isn't a reason to get depressed. I mean, outside of one team, everybody's going to lose." He clenches his fists in his pockets and stares at the brick pillar off to the side of Kuroo's head.

"The only thing different is the timing." That's a lie.

"It's not that big of a deal," his voice is shaky, but he lets himself look a little pleased. 

"I mean, it's not like you _actually believed_ you were going to win nationals, right?" No, of course, Kuroo didn't think like that, right? It's silly, it's all silly, why would you play if you couldn't win?

He already knows the answer, but he still waits with bated breath for Tetsurou to speak.

Kuroo simply raises his eyebrows and shrugs. He looks disconnected, like he couldn't care less about what it means to be loved back. Instead of flaring up like Suguru had expected, he tilts his head to the side.

"You have a point." _Huh?_

"There aren't many guys out there..." He thinks for a moment, closing his eyes, 

"...Who believe, truly, completely, that they're going to win every time." 

Daishou remembers Karasuno's hunger.

"That takes way more than what most people have." He opens his eyes and looks straight into the ugly fear of loving nestled inside Suguru. Daishou opens his mouth, and for a second, nothing comes out.

"C'mon. That's it?" He squints at Tetsurou.

"You're supposed to get mad! Sheesh. Taunting you is no fun anymore." 

Suguru waits for the snap back, anything to return to their normal conversation, but Kuroo just has the same tired, happy look in his eyes. Nothing is said and he feels a change in the few seconds of words unsaid.

There's something tight and rotten in his chest, and he feels like pulling it out for just a second, to drop his facade and love without bounds. Kuroo is right. There's hardly anyone who can think earnestly that they're going to win. Even simpleton spikers like Bokuto know that they can't win every time. No win worth its salt and sweat comes without a prior loss. 

Then why did he play? Not to win, that much is clear now. He shuffles back a step and thinks. It's like a third tempo set being tossed up in the midst of a flurry of back to back quicks. A slow ball that Kuroo set for him to spike, like an invitation. 

"You're right," Suguru speaks cautiously, carefully. He hadn't envisioned himself ever saying those words to Kuroo, yet here he was, at odds with everything he had promised himself he wouldn't do since his second year.

"None of this has anything to do with whether you can win or not," He mutters, still loud enough for the others to hear. He can feel himself getting worked up about the entire ordeal.

"It's not like we quit just because we lost." Suguru thinks about himself, cynical and benched. When had it started mattering to him, whether he won or lost? Where did the simple joy of playing go? When had he gone from being in love with volleyball to being in love with winning at volleyball?

"And winning is not the reason we play." 

The revelation? The revelation is surprisingly simple. Suguru plays volleyball because he loves it, and he loves it so much he could do it until he died. It's comically simple, even. That's a little frustrating, and he can't help but let it leak into his diction.

"I get all that dammit!" This time he's speaking to Kuroo, not himself. "You don't hafta rub it in, you rooster-haired freak!" 

"My goodness! Daishou-kun, such language!" Kuroo sounds like an old posh lady, but despite his joking tone, the message is clear. The other two don't seem to quite understand why Daishou is so distressed, though.

After nationals, Daishou comes back to the Nohebi volleyball club gymnasium and bounces a Mikasa brand ball off the side of the wall. He's a third-year, he ought to think about his future. He said he'd become a lawyer or something practical. He told his parents and yet... the sheer unbridled joy he got from just watching a game of volleyball, to live a life like that— it’s all he can think about.

He's no monster, he's no prodigy. Volleyball doesn't love anyone, and it doesn't need to. He'd love volleyball just the same, monster or mortal. Offer or no offer. He keeps playing through college and then goes to tryouts. He plays with his heart, with no strings attached. He hits the ball with passion, unafraid of what might happen to his past injuries. The only thing worse than his shoulder ripping for good was playing a game he'd regret.

Suguru makes it onto a Division 2 team, and it's probably the happiest day of his life. He and Mika are over, but he still calls her up along with the rest of his team and Kuroo for a celebration party. It's warm and triumphant. 

Kuroo swirls the remnants of some cheap alcohol around in his glass and the ice cubes rattle loud enough to attract the attention of everyone shoved into Suguru's cramped 2x1 apartment.

"What'd I say about Suguru-chan at nationals?" He smiles lazily.

"You didn't say shit, Rooster-hair, I figured it out on my own!" 

"That's what everyone I hand my card to says, sooner or later."

" _Bullshiiiiiit._ "

Suguru laughs, and he's still young and happy. He thinks about volleyball, and he is still in love.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont even know how to describe how much daishou means to me at this point. its kind of ridiculous how much solace i find in a side character that most people don't give half a damn about. to this day i have no idea what draws me towards him. what i DO know is that on the day of 402's release, i was completely stone-faced until i saw the tiny panel of daishou, and then it was over. shortly thereafter, my friends can attest to me blubbering and sobbing on voice call. and since then i wrote this little homage in a fever. 
> 
> writing this also definitely made me appreciate kuroo's character in the story, his timeskip job really is perfect for him
> 
> i hope it wasnt too much of a drag to read!  
> many thanks to shar (@BL4CKJACKALS on twitter) for betaing this fic, it was my first time with a beta and i think this would have been much less polished without her input ily shar


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